Self Care Gua Sha Facial Massage

Gua sha facial massage uses a smooth-edged tool to gently stroke the skin, promoting fluid drainage to reduce facial puffiness and relieve held tension in the jaw and brow. This light scraping motion stimulates local microcirculation, giving the skin a temporary natural radiance and healthy flush. Regular practice can also encourage lymphatic flow along the face and neck, helping clear sluggish fluid for a smoother, more refreshed appearance.

Transcript

Welcome to the self-care sequence. Get your jade stone ready. If you don't have one yet, You can use the flat of your knuckles and that could be a substitute. So just use that as you would use the stone. We're going to start out this treatment by doing a nice deep breath in through the nose. Belly rises, Chest rises. Slowly out through the nose. Follow your breath through this self-care sequence. So we're going to start by stretching out the chest. This is where we need to drain the fluid into towards the armpit. So I'm going to interlace my fingers. I'm going to place them behind my back and I'm going to roll my shoulders back and that's going to stretch my pec minor, My pec major and my chest muscles. So as you're doing this, Hold these stretches for 60 seconds. And make sure to take some nice deep breaths in and out. And focus on opening up all of the meridians and all of the pathways. Deep breath in through the nose. And slowly out through the nose. As you guys can probably feel right now. Your chest muscles are stretching out and you can probably feel them filling up with fluid as you release this stretch. So just hold it for 60 seconds. And release. Now we're going to get in and stretch the neck muscles because we also want to drain the facial area down the neck into the armpit. So place your hand over your head. And then move your head to the side. And then this is going to stretch the scalene muscles, The levator scapula, The upper traps. And hold this for 60 seconds. Take some nice deep breaths in and out. And out. If you feel like you're really tight, You can kind of bring your head towards your hand. And contract for 5 to 10 seconds, Just gently. And then relax. And then see if you can pull yourself a little more into the stretch, Not forcing anything. But that will help to increase the stretch. And hopefully open up the meridians a little bit better. Hold that for 60 seconds. And once you feel a nice little stretch and release, Release and do the other side. So same thing. Hand above head. And we're bringing the head to the side. We're stretching out the scalenes. The upper traps. And then I'm gonna do a gentle little contraction into my hand. With my head. For five to 10 seconds and I'm going to relax. I'm going to take a nice deep breath in and out. And then we're gonna move into the stretch. A little bit more. And hold this for 60 seconds. Deep breath in and out. Feel everything opening. Raise your consciousness around how your body feels. Was there more tension on one side than the other? This is a good way of just getting to know your body. And not kind of judging anything or necessarily even trying to wonder why, But just seeing and feeling it. Now that we've stretched those parts of the chest and the neck. There's one more neck stretch that's going to be really good and probably the most important one is to turn the head 90 degrees. And then bring the chin back slightly and we're stretching. This area right here from the mastoid process. All the way down the neck. This is your sternocleidomastoid muscle. If you have any type of dizziness, Vertigo, This is a really important one to stretch. But it's also particularly important in this case because we're looking to drain down that portion of the neck in towards the armpit, Which is really going to help to re-oxygenate the muscles and all the area of the face. So turn 90 degrees. Bring your head back slightly and then stretch this area out. You can even take your hand and then pull the fascia down a little bit just on your clavicle here. And once again, Some deep breaths in and out. Hold that for 60 seconds. And after you felt the stretch, Come back to neutral. Allow yourself a moment. And then. . . Turn the head to the other side. And same thing, Tilt the head back slightly. We're stretching this area. You guys can probably see it on me quite easily. And then you can anchor down once again towards the clavicle. And take some nice deep breaths in through the nose and slowly out through the nose. And you might feel a sinking here on your chest and an opening of the anterior portion, The front of your neck. Okay, Come back to neutral, And now we're gonna start with the jade stone. So we're gonna start at the chin. And we're going to lift. The ear. So we're starting at the chin. Gentle, Slow strokes. And as you reach this point, The master muscle, If you have jaw pain, This is going to be a really, Really effective thing to do is to just wiggle back and forth. Not too hard. But it just helps to open up the circulation in the area. And it's good for breaking up any little adhesions that you may have. If you feel a specific point of tension, You could do a trigger point release where you hold. And not a lot of pressure, But just hold for about 60 seconds. And that will help to release that trigger point in that area. This is one that I often do with clients who have TMJ issues. Or something that I'll recommend to someone if they have any jaw pain, Like a friend or family member. So going along there, Just break that up. Towards the ear. Now we're gonna go just underneath the cheekbone. And just caress the tissue and bring it up. And press the tissue and bring it up towards the ear. Caress the tissue, Bring it up. You can even do a nice little wiggle here towards the scalp. And come around the ear, That feels really nice. And now we're moving just on top of the zygomatic arch. Nice long flowy strokes. Now we'll go underneath the eye. Be really gentle here. And you're kind of caressing underneath this bag of the eye. And then for me, Where I have crow's feet. We're gonna lift that up so. Gentle, Gentle and like lift. And towards the scalp. Gentle caressing underneath, Dipping underneath, Raising. Those crows feed up for me. And then towards the scalp. Little wiggle and then around the scalp around the ear. You can even follow that down the neck and experiment with some different movements. Whatever feels good to you guys too. Whatever feels intuitive. I'm sure you're going to find your own techniques that you really love. For me, My favorite is this next one. Which is the eyebrow. So I'll go across, Just on top of the eyebrow. This feels, I don't even know why or how, But. This is my favorite one, It's so relaxing. And if you've been looking at screens, Your phone. . . This is a really nice one. So just do that five to 10 times. So each level that we work at. Gentle on the cross 5-10 times is a good rule of thumb. Although I got to admit for this one I will sometimes sit here and do about 30 times. And above the eyebrow, Towards the ear. Towards the ear. And towards the ear, Now into the frontalis muscle if you have tension headaches. This one's gonna be really nice, So from the middle of the forehead. Across. Middle of the forehead, Slow, Gentle, And across. As you get to the scalp, Nice little wiggle and that will help to release some of that stress and tension. And then into the scalp. Cross and nice little wiggle. And then. Across just above the ear. Now we're gonna do a brow lift, So go underneath the brow. Lift it up. You can hold there for a moment. That's going to feel really good if you have any tension in your eye. And then lift up the forehead. Up the front tiles. Nice little wiggle, Release the tension. And into the scalp. Lifts Slow and gentle wiggle. And towards the scalp. Now that we've kind of completed this one side of the face, We're going to use our transitory technique. So we're going to use the curve of the stone. We're going to go into the third eye, We're going to lift both brows. And then we're going to lift that frontalis muscle. Do the wiggle at the top and then into the scalp. Do this one five times. This one feels really good. It's the reason why I use this stone because This little crescent moon shape conforms perfectly to your forehead. And I like to do little wiggles, Test out and see where I have tension. And stretch up the forehead. And into the scalp. Now that we've worked this one side of the face, We've done our stretches, We've opened up everything, We want to drain. So we're going to work in reverse from what we just did. So we're going to drain. This time down towards the ear after we've worked up and lifted everything. So we're moving across and down towards the ear across. And down towards the ear. Above the eyebrow. Down towards the ear. Work in reverse, Make sure that you cover all your steps below the eye towards the ear. Below the eye and towards the ear and now just on top of the zygomatic arch, The cheekbone. And towards the ear. Move a little bit lower. We're looking to drain all this fluid down the neck. Maybe the most important part of the sequence is to work optimally. And then drain down. So we're draining down the front of the neck. And we're working down this SCM muscle, Which is so important. The mastoid process all the way down. You guys can see it on me. If you have any type of vertigo, Tension, Headaches, Draining down and working on this neck muscle is going to be really important. So just work down that muscle. And as you're working down this neck, Now you can work towards the side. And as you move more towards the side, You can use a little more pressure. So I'm moving towards the side, Down the scalenes, Down the upper traps. I'm using a little more pressure and as you use more pressure you're going to feel those little specific adhesions break up. And just doing nice. A mount here on the neck. We really want to encourage all that drainage down the neck. And help to drain it in towards the armpit. Now that we've done the one side, I want you guys to take a moment and notice if you can see a difference between the side that's been treated and the untreated side. For me, I can notice that it feels just really nice and relaxed on this side. And this side just feels a little bit tense, Like I'm a little bit on edge or my nervous system is kind of. . . You know, Gripping a bit or something. And it's so interesting to me. The reason why I wanted to do this course was because I got a face massage, An entire hour of face and chest. And it was the best massage I've had in years. I felt so relaxed. I felt so amazing. And I just didn't realize that a lot of the tension that we hold in our face is contributing to our stress. Like our stress is contributing to it and then it's contributing to our stress. So doing this treatment was really kind of a revelation for me and what inspired this entire course. So now that we've noticed both sides and this side feels amazing, This side not so much, We're going to work and do the same sequence on this side. Work up the jaw, Up the master. Do a nice little wiggle. This feels really good. My jaw has been really tense on this side. It's a nice little wiggle. Move up slowly and lift the tissue from the chin all the way up the cheek. Do a wiggle on the masseter. Then underneath the cheekbone in the zygomatic arch. And move towards the ear. And once again, Rule of thumb, Five to 10 strokes per little area that we're going. Underneath the eye, Really gentle lift my crow's feet up. And then Nice little wiggle towards the scalp and then above the ear. So gentle caress below the eye. And then lift and then around the ear. Experiment with these really long strokes. I think you guys will find that they're way more relaxing when you do a really full stroke that encompasses around an entire area. So we're going along, Lifting. And above the ear. So now we're going to go on the eyebrow. You guys know this is my personal favorite so I'll probably be here for a minute. And. . . Move. Just on the eyebrow across And you could even go a little bit lower and then lift the brow as you're working over it. And then you can go above the eyebrow. And just a couple of strokes here. And make sure that you're still connecting with your breath that's going to help to re-oxygenate the area better. And once you've done that, We'll do a natural brow lift. So we're lifting up. Towards the scalp, A little wiggle. Get rid of that tension, Tell it to go away. And then. All the way up the scalp. So we're lifting And then we're. Nice little wiggle. See you later, Tension. And then. . . We're going up the scalp. Now we can go aside. Ways and that's working the frontalis muscle. So we're just going down the side of the forehead. And I'm working nice and gently. In towards the ear. Feel free to experiment with different rates of doing this. So you can go. A little bit slower, A little bit faster. See what feels good. And down towards the ear. And now we can do our lift at the third eye, So we're lifting. And then we're going up the front of the forehead. Nice little wiggle. And then up the scalp. So we're lifting that tissue. And then we're lifting our spirits and we're going up into the scalp, Releasing the tension. And just above the scalp and you can follow that even all the way down the scalp in towards the suboccipital muscles in your back. So just follow that all the way along. Nice and gentle as you get to the back of the head. And try that out, It feels really good. It's kind of like a self scalp massage if you will. And you could do that a couple of times. Okay. So now. . . Wow, That's feeling a lot better. Hope you guys are feeling good. I'm feeling kind of lifted. My spirit's light. So after we've done all that, We're gonna work back down and then drain down the neck to finish the sequence. So we're going to work across. Once again, And we're draining down towards the ear. So our focus is on moving the stone towards the ear. We're going above the eyebrow towards the ear. And then on the eyebrow. And below the eye towards the ear. And then we're going over the zygomatic arch. Towards the ear. And we're moving underneath. We're going towards that part of the ear. The lips. You can even go beside the lips and left. Then go down. And the cheek and then curl down this time down the master so you're moving to the side and then curl Damn. And. . . Once again, Here is the most important part. We're going to work down the front of the neck. So turn your head to the side and then down the front of the neck. And you're moving from this little bone, You can feel it with your fingertips. And once you find it, You can do a little wiggle there that will release some of the tension. And that feels so good. And then down the front of the neck. Nice little wiggle, Release and relax that tension. And then down the front of the neck. And then move in towards the other portions of the neck. So we're going in the more middle portion now. Then you can move towards the back and as you move towards the back you can use more pressure. And I'm going down. And make sure you get some nice strokes in this area. You can do quite a few to encourage that drainage. And I'm almost falling asleep guys and I'm sure You guys are so relaxed, You're probably feeling that too. And down. Ooh, Okay. I feel so good. Take a nice deep breath in through the nose. Belly rises, Chest rises, Hold it at the top. And slowly out through the nose. Take a moment to see how you feel. This is a really good thing to do, And especially to do this not only for self-care, But also to improve your skills as a therapist, No matter what kind of therapist you may be. So for me as a massage therapist, When I do this, I get a feeling for how the treatment can actually feel. And I'm also seeing what kind of pressure I like. The strokes. And you get more confident with the stone. So the more self-care you do, You become more confident. You're going to discover new things. If you're a massage therapist or an esthetician, Beauty therapist, Maybe just a self-care enthusiast. And you know a lot about muscles. This could be something you could explore, Different techniques on different muscles. So I really encourage doing a lot of self-care, Not only just for de-stressing and decreasing your sympathetic nervous system, But also to explore, Experiment, And to become a better therapist.